It’s got ‘Art Edition’ right there in the name, for starters. This time, as you play Prometheus scaring off the eagle pecking out his liver for eternity, you’ll find the game hanging on a wall, and its frame reflecting your webcam-captured face back at you. Just like real Art you see in real galleries!

I like Secret Habitat. I like it an awful lot. I’ve been playing this latest from Strangethink Software for a fortnight and I keep returning to see more but it’s taken me this long to post because I want to do right by it. Oh, this’ll have to do! Secret Habitat is wonderful and special, okay?

I have made more progress on my cup of tea in the last five minutes than I have in clicking on the Tate Worlds download link for an André Derain Minecraft map. The map forms part of a Tate project which sees artworks from its collection inspire Minecraft worlds and experiences. The reason for my reluctance is that I’ve only just stopped crying over the one based around Christopher Nevinson’s The Soul Of The Soulless City. It wasn’t moved-by-art crying either. It was horrified, panicked sobbing – a visceral reaction to claustrophobia and lifelessness.

Consider this your daily dose of nice. Artist Joey Spiotto, aka Joebot, draws films and videogames as the covers of children’s books. His game work includes imagined covers for Half-Life 2 (above, in part), Skyrim, BioShock, Portal, Mass Effect and more.Read the rest of this entry »

The diagram above and the video below are both proof of Cello Fortress, a multiplayer game where four players use tanks to attempt to break into a fortress protected by a cellist, is thing that is real. But I’m calling foul. What’s more likely? That the maker of the pretty racing game Proun has managed to turn the music a cello creates into a gaming art show, or that John has created an elaborate series of blogs, websites, press releases, and even gone so far as to hire actors to video a concert to fake a game? And years from now, when everything is going well for me, he’ll text me telling me it was all a joke to make me look slightly silly and I’ll cry? He’s done it before, and he’ll do it again.Read the rest of this entry »

New York’s MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) has a forthcoming permanent exhibit featuring fourteen videogames, with a desire to grow this collection to around 40. The obvious choices like Pac-Man and Tetris are joined by a far more eclectic and interesting list, including Dwarf Fortress and Canabalt.

How can I resist posting about this? An art project by Jeffrey Kam and Cody McCabe, Meatcraft, saw a real world version of Minecraft on display at San Jose State University in March, in which visitors were encouraged to build from the little cardboard Minecraft blocks. And rather brilliantly, this was all within a large Minecraft-themed set, guarded by a life-size Creeper. There’s pics below.

EDIT: OK! Looks like the Smithsonian’s site is struggling a bit. If you get an empty black space, just leave it. The voting application will load eventually.

Some things in life are certain. The sun will rise. We will age. Games will continue trudging their way towards being a globally respected medium like some decades-drunk bachelor trying to find his way home.

RPS reader Delirium Wartner sends word that the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC is going to be hosting an exhibition entitled The Art of Video Games which “will explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium”, and they want YOU (read: whoever) to vote on which games should make the cut. If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare, the voting process is easy and makes for a fun trip down memory lane. Most of the time, anyway.Read the rest of this entry »

In a slightly more controlled frame of mind, after the sweary action below, Mr Sims, Rod Humble, of course provided us with a space-themed game last year. Stars Over Half Moon Bay is an altogether far more sedate and serene setting, focusing eyes on the stars, and moods on the chilled.

If you’ve played Humble’s previous game, The Marriage, you’ll know that his private game development doesn’t bear much in common with the day job. While both could be described as “obscure”, Stars is possibly a lot more accessible than Marriage, with a more immediately identifiable means of interaction. Explaining the way the game works goes against the ethos of Humble’s design, so let’s leave it with saying that you’re playing with the stars, first dancing with them, then rescuing them, and finally creating with them. Also, it has the loveliest name of all games ever.

When I think of art that has influenced me most, it is generally work done by individuals. I can’t recall the last time a corporation created a brilliant painting. I find that this also tends to be true in the emerging area of art games. Individuals are not generally driven to create purely for profit, and have more leeway to experiment and create according to their own artistic vision.

I thought it was time to compile a “best of” list for art games, because there has only been one other such list that I recall online. I’m sure someone will correct me on that point if there has been in fact another well drafted list somewhere out there.

THERE IS NO LIST. These games, then, are works of modern bedroom programming. One man (perhaps sometimes two men), a PC, and a vision. I’d contend the placing, naturally, and not just because such judgments are subjective, but because I have supernatural access to the absolute values of all things, especially games. I am a transcendental critic, and I say In A Deep Forest should be at number five.

Yes sir, there are some classics in there, despite, as the intro mentions, the fact that he’s had to discount some of the lost works of genius that aren’t playable by all. So go and take a look, right now. Go on, stop reading this sentence. Honesty I’m not going to impart any more information, these words are complete filler. Really, see, you’re wasting your time even scanning along this far. I’m not going to say anything else worth your reading. Go!